These four chapters talked about grading and what should be included in final grades. The main focus of chapter 7 was grading policy. I learned that differentiated instruction directly impacts a teacher’s grading policy. I learned that because there is no common benchmarks for an A, B, C, etc. grades are not an accurate indicator of mastery. A suggestion that the book gave is to talk to colleagues and define what exactly makes an A, B, C, etc. Talking about these differences can help inform me as an educator what my colleagues think and will help a team of teachers grade so that the students’ grades are accurate indicators of mastery. Another big idea that I got out of this chapter is that grades are more accurate if they are based on points, not based on an average since averages compare students to each other. Chapter 8 talks about the reason why teachers grade. The most common reason that teachers grade is because as teachers we need to document, provide feedback and guide discussions on a regular basis in order for students to achieve in our class. The big thing that I learned about in this chapter is whether or not behavior, attendance, and participation should be included in grades. The big take away that I learned from this chapter is that these things shouldn’t be included in the final grade. Attendance should not be included because if students aren’t present but are still doing the work then they shouldn’t be penalized for not being able to make it to class. The reason that the book gave for not including behavior is because it is not an accurate indicator of mastery, which is the goal with grades. Participation should only be included in the grade is it is the skill being taught. Chapter 9 gave a list of ten things to avoid when grading. Some of these things were incorporating behavior, attendance, and participation into grades, which was talked about in chapter 8; penalizing students for multiple attempts; grading homework; extra credit and bonus points; and recording zero’s for incomplete work. I learned that these things should not be included in the final grade for the same reason: it’s not an accurate portrayal of what the student knows. Chapter 10 talks about an idea that happens every day in classrooms: makeup work. In this chapter I learned that as a teacher I should give students the change to redo work because different things are happening every day in students’ lives outside the classroom. This chapter talks about the fact that teachers should give full credit for makeups and redo’s. Since the goal is for the students to master the material, it is not fair to penalize the student for redoing the work in order to master the concepts, especially since everyone learns at a different pace.
Shane
Personally I relate to these chapters because I always give 100% and I expect teachers to potential in me and push me to keep growing and developing. I don’t always like the concept of being limited by due dates so letting students redo work and grow and develop is something I relate to. I don’t believe you can put a due date on learning, it should be like building blocks where we keep building it up. The 4 chapters of FIAE try to give us methods on how to handle grades, what they should be about and how to change them. The chapters start out with being consistent and how to define your grades right from the beginning. This is important as a teacher because if you flip flop your students are going to hate your class because they don’t know the expectations. Students shouldn’t just be working toward a grade they should have a purpose; this is why students love feedback. They have the opportunity to grow and develop from the feedback that is given to them by a teacher. The chapter later dig into what a grade actually means. This essentially means what should and shouldn’t be included in a final grade for a student. One policy that has disagreement would be attendance or participation and often times effort. These are all very opinion based and often times students hate being graded on these, but I think this could be helpful and as a learning or teaching tool you could meet with the student and get their feedback on what they think they deserve what you think they deserve and evaluate based on that, because maybe there was a reason for not participating that you wouldn’t have known before. Attendance polices should be covered mostly by the school, but if a teacher has that in their grades for a fair percentage then it should be respected. The last really important factor that will help me as a teacher would be differentiating assessment and grading. This is a simple concept, but since we are learning about it and from experience in school it isn’t always followed. As teachers we want our students to be successful not try to change our grading up and assessments to try to make them fail. We are drying to help them expand their knowledge and make them get the most out of it and I think that is why this is super important for all of us to understand.
Lydia
Many schools think that grades are necessary to assess how a student has gained the mastery of a certain subject. However, grades are really just ways for students to compete and be compared to other students by their teachers. For this reason it is important to determine how a student can learn in a meaningful way without the grades that they have be a false representation of how the students work. Because of the diversity of students and their different backgrounds and home environment they may not be able to complete their assignments to the teacher’s standards. This in turn makes teachers have a certain bias over students and makes them feel sorry for the condition that they are in. It is also hard to determine what you should grade and what you should not grade such as participation or extra credit. It is not always the best thing to give a heavily weighted grade towards participation because this does not show what the student has or has not learned either. This goes the same for extra credit; extra credit can also be abused by the students to create a higher grade that may not have anything to do with the subject that they are learning. As a teacher it is hard to determine what things are useful in class and which things will not accurately describe the student’s learning experience. Students can also abuse the right to redo assignments if given the opportunity. This will affect me and my students in class because it could determine whether or not their grade is good or bad as well as not take advantage of the opportunity that the teacher is giving them and get a lower score on the assignment. One thing that will also affect me as a teacher as well as the students it that homework should not be used as a big percentage of the student’s grade. I must make sure that the assignment is practice of something that the students have already mastered and make sure not to give them too much homework about something that the students have not learned about yet. I need to balance what I should grade with the fact that students have mastered a certain concept and understand that not all students master the same thing at the same times during the school year.
Laura
Each of these chapters focused on grades and grading policy. While some of the material (especially that found in Chapter 9) seemed like common sense, some of the material struck me as surprising at first, but then made more sense as I continued to read on. For example, I always thought that students should be and are graded on things like participation and effort, but I never considered how such factors could skew a student’s grade in terms of mastery. Because I feel that students deserve to be “rewarded” for their hard work, I thought that it would make sense to include these factors in the grading criteria, but these chapters of the book emphasize that the purpose of grades is to measure mastery and nothing else. This does make sense, however, especially since education has become standards-based. Also, because grades are subjective and oftentimes controversial, it is important for students to understand why they are receiving the grades they get; never let a grade speak for itself. As a teacher, I will make sure to include commentary and rationales along with grades so that students and parents can make sense of them. I also believe in recognizing student effort and participation without including it in the gradebook. Instead, I will use feedback and reinforcement both through formative assessment, and later, in a “separate column on the report card” (112). Like the book states, students are more likely to work harder when they know their effort is appreciated, but they also may need extra feedback and motivation when it comes to putting forth a little more effort. I will never have this extra motivation stem from giving a student a bad grade, however; instead, I will give them feedback before it is time for me to determine their level of mastery. And, if a student is still struggling when the time of assessment comes, I will give them the opportunity to redo the work whenever it is feasible. I found Chapter 10 to have strong insights towards redoing work. For example, I never really considered that allowing students to redo tests whenever they want could result in them becoming “chronic redoers.” This had made me realize that I will need to establish a policy regarding redos before the school year begins so that I can be prepared for all kinds of circumstances.
Cory
All four of these chapters were all associated with grading. There’s was a quite a bit about how differentiated teaching plays into grading, as well as a lot of criticism towards the current methods of grading, some of which I agreed with, some I didn’t. One suggestion I liked was the A, B, C, and I idea. They kept the traditional way of grading, up until the F, where they replaced it with an I for, “incomplete.” This was left incomplete until the student showed that they and mastered the material of the assignment. This is an interesting way of looking at an assignment. This prevents students from feeling like failures if they do not understand something the first time around, boosting their motivation. But this system could easily be abused. It seems that the majority of work could be remade, since a student can have an I until it is seen that they deserve another grade. This might actually lower motivation of some students; they can just fail the first time without putting any effort in and then keep trying until they actually master it. This concept should be implemented with an idea from chapter 10; allowing the teacher to have make up work at their discretion. The teacher can then choose if a student is worthy of gaining a second chance. If the teacher sees actual effort being put in, then I find it acceptable to give a student an I until they fully understand the information. But if a student gives no effort expecting that they can coast along in the class on retakes, then the privilege should be taken away from them. It’s a privilege, not a given right, so students should not have the ability abuse it. On idea that I didn’t fully agree with was in chapter 10. It talked about not allowing bonus points. But I think bonus points is a good thing when used correctly. It should only be used to push students beyond their normal learning. Using bonus points as an incentive to push students past their normal way of thinking is the only way it should be used in my opinion, but it can’t be used too often. Students should not rely on extra credit to pass a class.
Dominick
How does grading practices and differentiated instruction impact grading policies? This is one of the many question that compose this chapter? Summative grade have little pedagogical use so teachers must find a another way to measure the students mastery of a subject. If the proper measures are not taken then teacher may never realize how well versed the student is with the knowledge. There need to be a new innovative way to grading appropriately as well. There needs to be radical adjustments made to this process. Differentiated instruction ties in with this concept to demonstrate a broader picture: teachers must find new ways to find out the students mastery of a subject. Dr. Tom Guskey reported something along the lines of good work can be graded more favorably when worse papers precede it. Students can easily manipulate the grading system by simply putting their papers below someone who has turned in poorer quality work. This brings up an interesting point: why do students feel the need to this? The chapter answers this with explaining there is too much emphasis on grades. Students feel pressured to perform and make desperate decision in order to try and achieve success. Teachers must find another outlet of measuring students mastery. Irrelevant factors in the students mastery of the content should not impact the students grade. Attendance for example should not be considered in the grade of the students because this has nothing to do with their ability to demonstrate their mastery of the subject. Grades tend to bring out some bad qualities in students: dependence, lack of creativity and value. How will these qualities create innovative students? It will not and students will soon reflect and emptiness that holds no value. Teachers need to encourage the students to take in the value of the knowledge and use it. Rick Stiggins brings up many interesting points, but one that is key to realize is that students will be afraid to take risks. This will destroy any hopes of sparking creativity in a classroom.
Katelin
In these chapters, they all had mainly things I agreed with. I have gone back and forth in what I think I am going to do with my grading system and I still come up undecided, which is usual. In my field placement I learned that as a department they decide grading and that is how each of the math classes are, which I do not agree with at all because it is half tests half quizzes. Grading with letter grades becomes an obsession for students and teachers, and often is not an accurate way of assessing someone’s mastery of a subject. Grades are also not consistent most of the time because we are humans. I agree with not grading practice work though. One of the chapters talked about allowing retakes on tests and quizzes because students all learn at a different pace, but I do not think it should be a test or quiz that they get the retake on. They should do something else to show their mastery on the subject because maybe the test was the problem, they just are not good at taking them. If they did a mini project or explained to the teacher like in the book that they knew what they were doing, maybe that would work better. I love the new idea of standards based grading as long as it is executed well. I think that it is very true that it kills teachers to give two students who one tried wicked hard to study and complete work while other just showed up for a test the same A. Standards based grading lets the teacher have a separate category for the attendance and work completed etc to show what type of students they are. Yes, they might be really smart and can master some work, but that would not be an accurate grade of what the teacher asked them to do. The standards based learning I think also goes along with not giving a lot of tests and quizzes, but more of letting students prove their mastery in something a different way.
Rhi
There are so many ideas and perspectives on grading. Some teachers really want their students to succeed and some teachers seem to just attach a letter grade without thinking about how it reflects the student’s mastery. As a student, I know I want to know what I did wrong and what exactly I did right. The answers to these questions would help me later on to make sure that I either get a better grade next time or ensure that I get another good grade. I would compare my answers with a friend and sometimes we would be unable to see what one person did better than the other. Sometimes, my teachers would give the class opportunities to re-hand in an assignment if the grades were low, but she wouldn't tell us what the right answers were. This would really help students to engage themselves in their own learning and work hard to figure out what the answer would be.
Chapter seven was about the different views on grades and how they are opinionated. Chapter eight talked about the different sides/reasons of grading. It divided the reasons into two categories. One category is to motivate, punish and sort students. The other category is for documenting teacher and student progress, to provide feedback and to inform instructional decisions. Chapter nine was about timing in terms of grading and homework. As teachers we must make sure not to teach through homework because students can actually suffer from it. I think if a teacher tries to teach through homework, a student could not get all the information they need to know, where then when assessment time came, they wouldn't be able to refer to all the correct information. Chapter ten was about the retaking policy when it comes to tests and homework. I can relate to this chapter because of the many policies that I have seen. I am uncertain as to what my personal retake policy will be but I want to make sure that it is for the student benefit without them taking advantage of it. I have seen situations where students will not try as hard on something but they know they will have an opportunity to retake it when they have more time. I think it is important to leave retakes only to certain situations to try and avoid this.
Sara
In these chapters the main idea that I got was about grading, but really being sure and being aware of how you are grading. All the chapters talked about different times that teachers grade students and the different way teacher’s grade students. It is very important for a teacher to really think about how they are grading an assignment and not just put a grade on a student’s work without careful thought first. I feel that the idea of grading has changed drastically from how it is meant to be. Grading should be a reflection of sorts for the student and the teacher to determine how the student is progressing and how they are doing in the class their selves. However grading has become very informal and sort of a one shoe fits all for every student. We work hard as teachers to try to teach too many different learning styles, but then fall short when it comes to grading. There are too many aspects that need to be taken into account when grading a student’s work to grade each student the same. There are somethings in these chapters that I did not fully agree with, and that I think I will use in my classroom. I think grading homework and grading effort have their place in the math classroom given the right circumstances. I think that homework meant to allow students to practice new concepts outside of school is very important. Students need the extra practice to help them master the concept. While I agree that this is not always the case, I do think there are situations where homework is needed. In these situations I think that students should be graded on effort rather than if they got the problem right or wrong. Homework should be used as practice for the students, therefore they should not get penalized if they tried a problem and made a mistake. Students should be encouraged to try a difficult problem and not be afraid to make mistakes. While I understand that grading effort can be difficult and at times not appropriate. When it comes to my classroom and the extra practice homework I will have students do, effort will be something I take into consideration.
Cooper
All four of these chapters focused on grading and how different things can impact the process. I think growing up we view grading as this concrete incorruptible and sometimes unflinching standard, these readings have done a lot to illuminate the potential fluidity of grading. Chapter 8 of the reading talks about how grading typically serves two purposes either to motivate students or to assess progress. These two purposes are drastically different but both can serve a purpose in the classroom. In an ideal world we could grade students entirely on progression as the main goal for any instructor should be to further their student's understanding and not necessarily to make sure that students all reach the same arbitrary benchmark. However, we know that all students aren't motivated entirely by a curiosity in the content area or a yearning to understand the content and for students like this sometimes grades can be an effective motivator. If a gifted student is becoming bored with the material and is clearly not putting forth a full effort then perhaps their grade should reflect that, maybe it is an 'A' for another student but it merely their 'C' work. Conversely a student who is has taken their work from being an objective 'F' to an objective 'C' that progress could warrant consideration for a higher grade. This of course would lend itself to criticisms of unfairness and punishing students for understanding the material, but that is what makes "Fair isn't Always Equal" an appropriate title for the book. The idea is that as teachers we should want to push students to do their best work and to progress as much as they can as learners and that means that sometimes we are obliged to tell students we don't think they are working to their potential. I feel just about any way we view grading it can be problematic, but the constants in terms of purpose for grading should be that we are finding out where students are in relation to where we want them to be with our content and that we use that information to make sure that they are consistently challenged by and learning from the material.
Cheyenne
These chapters focused entirely on grading and grading policies. I agreed with a lot of what these chapters said, especially concerning the mastery of material and how that does not always seem like a priority in the way many teachers have been grading. I think it is important that projects and tests be weighted more heavily than homework, because these are the outlets that show that students understand the content. Often times, homework is simply busy work, designed to promote memorization that does nothing for content mastery. It is easy enough for students to fill in answers from the text, or answer questions that are simple in nature and do not require any higher level thought processes. If anything, homework should be seeing if students are understanding the content that was taught to them, and can be a useful tool in this manner, but it should not be graded.
There was also mention of proficiency based grading, which is something that is starting to come into popularity, and I personally hope the trend continues. Proficiency based grading relies on student mastery in order for students to pass classes. It does not focus on memorizing facts and 100 point scaling, but instead grades on a simpler scale of the student’s level of understanding. These are often things used currently in charter schools and private schools, and rely heavily on project based learning. Through projects, students are easier able to dig into the material, uncover knowledge of the content, and then display what they know in a creative way. If something does not come across clearly, they may be given the chance to explain their projects, thus proving their understanding (or lackthereof) through verbal means. This helps eliminate testing, which does not prove anything about a student’s true and full understanding of the content.
There was also discussion about differentiation in terms of grading. This included things such as not grading things that are unrelated to content mastery. Behavior, attendance, and effort are not things that need to be incorporated into final grades, as they show nothing about what the students has or has not learned. Participation is a good way to gain an understanding of some students’ knowledge, especially those who may not be able to routinely complete their homework but still understand the material. But participation can also be daunting and something that can bring a final grade down on students who prefer not to talk in class and are better suited to showing their understanding through projects.
Table of Contents
Sarah
These four chapters talked about grading and what should be included in final grades. The main focus of chapter 7 was grading policy. I learned that differentiated instruction directly impacts a teacher’s grading policy. I learned that because there is no common benchmarks for an A, B, C, etc. grades are not an accurate indicator of mastery. A suggestion that the book gave is to talk to colleagues and define what exactly makes an A, B, C, etc. Talking about these differences can help inform me as an educator what my colleagues think and will help a team of teachers grade so that the students’ grades are accurate indicators of mastery. Another big idea that I got out of this chapter is that grades are more accurate if they are based on points, not based on an average since averages compare students to each other. Chapter 8 talks about the reason why teachers grade. The most common reason that teachers grade is because as teachers we need to document, provide feedback and guide discussions on a regular basis in order for students to achieve in our class. The big thing that I learned about in this chapter is whether or not behavior, attendance, and participation should be included in grades. The big take away that I learned from this chapter is that these things shouldn’t be included in the final grade. Attendance should not be included because if students aren’t present but are still doing the work then they shouldn’t be penalized for not being able to make it to class. The reason that the book gave for not including behavior is because it is not an accurate indicator of mastery, which is the goal with grades. Participation should only be included in the grade is it is the skill being taught. Chapter 9 gave a list of ten things to avoid when grading. Some of these things were incorporating behavior, attendance, and participation into grades, which was talked about in chapter 8; penalizing students for multiple attempts; grading homework; extra credit and bonus points; and recording zero’s for incomplete work. I learned that these things should not be included in the final grade for the same reason: it’s not an accurate portrayal of what the student knows. Chapter 10 talks about an idea that happens every day in classrooms: makeup work. In this chapter I learned that as a teacher I should give students the change to redo work because different things are happening every day in students’ lives outside the classroom. This chapter talks about the fact that teachers should give full credit for makeups and redo’s. Since the goal is for the students to master the material, it is not fair to penalize the student for redoing the work in order to master the concepts, especially since everyone learns at a different pace.Shane
Personally I relate to these chapters because I always give 100% and I expect teachers to potential in me and push me to keep growing and developing. I don’t always like the concept of being limited by due dates so letting students redo work and grow and develop is something I relate to. I don’t believe you can put a due date on learning, it should be like building blocks where we keep building it up. The 4 chapters of FIAE try to give us methods on how to handle grades, what they should be about and how to change them. The chapters start out with being consistent and how to define your grades right from the beginning. This is important as a teacher because if you flip flop your students are going to hate your class because they don’t know the expectations. Students shouldn’t just be working toward a grade they should have a purpose; this is why students love feedback. They have the opportunity to grow and develop from the feedback that is given to them by a teacher. The chapter later dig into what a grade actually means. This essentially means what should and shouldn’t be included in a final grade for a student. One policy that has disagreement would be attendance or participation and often times effort. These are all very opinion based and often times students hate being graded on these, but I think this could be helpful and as a learning or teaching tool you could meet with the student and get their feedback on what they think they deserve what you think they deserve and evaluate based on that, because maybe there was a reason for not participating that you wouldn’t have known before. Attendance polices should be covered mostly by the school, but if a teacher has that in their grades for a fair percentage then it should be respected. The last really important factor that will help me as a teacher would be differentiating assessment and grading. This is a simple concept, but since we are learning about it and from experience in school it isn’t always followed. As teachers we want our students to be successful not try to change our grading up and assessments to try to make them fail. We are drying to help them expand their knowledge and make them get the most out of it and I think that is why this is super important for all of us to understand.Lydia
Many schools think that grades are necessary to assess how a student has gained the mastery of a certain subject. However, grades are really just ways for students to compete and be compared to other students by their teachers. For this reason it is important to determine how a student can learn in a meaningful way without the grades that they have be a false representation of how the students work. Because of the diversity of students and their different backgrounds and home environment they may not be able to complete their assignments to the teacher’s standards. This in turn makes teachers have a certain bias over students and makes them feel sorry for the condition that they are in. It is also hard to determine what you should grade and what you should not grade such as participation or extra credit. It is not always the best thing to give a heavily weighted grade towards participation because this does not show what the student has or has not learned either. This goes the same for extra credit; extra credit can also be abused by the students to create a higher grade that may not have anything to do with the subject that they are learning.
As a teacher it is hard to determine what things are useful in class and which things will not accurately describe the student’s learning experience. Students can also abuse the right to redo assignments if given the opportunity. This will affect me and my students in class because it could determine whether or not their grade is good or bad as well as not take advantage of the opportunity that the teacher is giving them and get a lower score on the assignment. One thing that will also affect me as a teacher as well as the students it that homework should not be used as a big percentage of the student’s grade. I must make sure that the assignment is practice of something that the students have already mastered and make sure not to give them too much homework about something that the students have not learned about yet. I need to balance what I should grade with the fact that students have mastered a certain concept and understand that not all students master the same thing at the same times during the school year.
Laura
Each of these chapters focused on grades and grading policy. While some of the material (especially that found in Chapter 9) seemed like common sense, some of the material struck me as surprising at first, but then made more sense as I continued to read on. For example, I always thought that students should be and are graded on things like participation and effort, but I never considered how such factors could skew a student’s grade in terms of mastery. Because I feel that students deserve to be “rewarded” for their hard work, I thought that it would make sense to include these factors in the grading criteria, but these chapters of the book emphasize that the purpose of grades is to measure mastery and nothing else. This does make sense, however, especially since education has become standards-based. Also, because grades are subjective and oftentimes controversial, it is important for students to understand why they are receiving the grades they get; never let a grade speak for itself. As a teacher, I will make sure to include commentary and rationales along with grades so that students and parents can make sense of them. I also believe in recognizing student effort and participation without including it in the gradebook. Instead, I will use feedback and reinforcement both through formative assessment, and later, in a “separate column on the report card” (112). Like the book states, students are more likely to work harder when they know their effort is appreciated, but they also may need extra feedback and motivation when it comes to putting forth a little more effort. I will never have this extra motivation stem from giving a student a bad grade, however; instead, I will give them feedback before it is time for me to determine their level of mastery. And, if a student is still struggling when the time of assessment comes, I will give them the opportunity to redo the work whenever it is feasible. I found Chapter 10 to have strong insights towards redoing work. For example, I never really considered that allowing students to redo tests whenever they want could result in them becoming “chronic redoers.” This had made me realize that I will need to establish a policy regarding redos before the school year begins so that I can be prepared for all kinds of circumstances.Cory
All four of these chapters were all associated with grading. There’s was a quite a bit about how differentiated teaching plays into grading, as well as a lot of criticism towards the current methods of grading, some of which I agreed with, some I didn’t. One suggestion I liked was the A, B, C, and I idea. They kept the traditional way of grading, up until the F, where they replaced it with an I for, “incomplete.” This was left incomplete until the student showed that they and mastered the material of the assignment. This is an interesting way of looking at an assignment. This prevents students from feeling like failures if they do not understand something the first time around, boosting their motivation. But this system could easily be abused. It seems that the majority of work could be remade, since a student can have an I until it is seen that they deserve another grade. This might actually lower motivation of some students; they can just fail the first time without putting any effort in and then keep trying until they actually master it. This concept should be implemented with an idea from chapter 10; allowing the teacher to have make up work at their discretion. The teacher can then choose if a student is worthy of gaining a second chance. If the teacher sees actual effort being put in, then I find it acceptable to give a student an I until they fully understand the information. But if a student gives no effort expecting that they can coast along in the class on retakes, then the privilege should be taken away from them. It’s a privilege, not a given right, so students should not have the ability abuse it. On idea that I didn’t fully agree with was in chapter 10. It talked about not allowing bonus points. But I think bonus points is a good thing when used correctly. It should only be used to push students beyond their normal learning. Using bonus points as an incentive to push students past their normal way of thinking is the only way it should be used in my opinion, but it can’t be used too often. Students should not rely on extra credit to pass a class.Dominick
How does grading practices and differentiated instruction impact grading policies? This is one of the many question that compose this chapter? Summative grade have little pedagogical use so teachers must find a another way to measure the students mastery of a subject. If the proper measures are not taken then teacher may never realize how well versed the student is with the knowledge. There need to be a new innovative way to grading appropriately as well. There needs to be radical adjustments made to this process. Differentiated instruction ties in with this concept to demonstrate a broader picture: teachers must find new ways to find out the students mastery of a subject.
Dr. Tom Guskey reported something along the lines of good work can be graded more favorably when worse papers precede it. Students can easily manipulate the grading system by simply putting their papers below someone who has turned in poorer quality work. This brings up an interesting point: why do students feel the need to this? The chapter answers this with explaining there is too much emphasis on grades. Students feel pressured to perform and make desperate decision in order to try and achieve success. Teachers must find another outlet of measuring students mastery.
Irrelevant factors in the students mastery of the content should not impact the students grade. Attendance for example should not be considered in the grade of the students because this has nothing to do with their ability to demonstrate their mastery of the subject. Grades tend to bring out some bad qualities in students: dependence, lack of creativity and value. How will these qualities create innovative students? It will not and students will soon reflect and emptiness that holds no value. Teachers need to encourage the students to take in the value of the knowledge and use it. Rick Stiggins brings up many interesting points, but one that is key to realize is that students will be afraid to take risks. This will destroy any hopes of sparking creativity in a classroom.
Katelin
In these chapters, they all had mainly things I agreed with. I have gone back and forth in what I think I am going to do with my grading system and I still come up undecided, which is usual. In my field placement I learned that as a department they decide grading and that is how each of the math classes are, which I do not agree with at all because it is half tests half quizzes. Grading with letter grades becomes an obsession for students and teachers, and often is not an accurate way of assessing someone’s mastery of a subject. Grades are also not consistent most of the time because we are humans. I agree with not grading practice work though. One of the chapters talked about allowing retakes on tests and quizzes because students all learn at a different pace, but I do not think it should be a test or quiz that they get the retake on. They should do something else to show their mastery on the subject because maybe the test was the problem, they just are not good at taking them. If they did a mini project or explained to the teacher like in the book that they knew what they were doing, maybe that would work better. I love the new idea of standards based grading as long as it is executed well. I think that it is very true that it kills teachers to give two students who one tried wicked hard to study and complete work while other just showed up for a test the same A. Standards based grading lets the teacher have a separate category for the attendance and work completed etc to show what type of students they are. Yes, they might be really smart and can master some work, but that would not be an accurate grade of what the teacher asked them to do. The standards based learning I think also goes along with not giving a lot of tests and quizzes, but more of letting students prove their mastery in something a different way.Rhi
There are so many ideas and perspectives on grading. Some teachers really want their students to succeed and some teachers seem to just attach a letter grade without thinking about how it reflects the student’s mastery. As a student, I know I want to know what I did wrong and what exactly I did right. The answers to these questions would help me later on to make sure that I either get a better grade next time or ensure that I get another good grade. I would compare my answers with a friend and sometimes we would be unable to see what one person did better than the other. Sometimes, my teachers would give the class opportunities to re-hand in an assignment if the grades were low, but she wouldn't tell us what the right answers were. This would really help students to engage themselves in their own learning and work hard to figure out what the answer would be.
Chapter seven was about the different views on grades and how they are opinionated. Chapter eight talked about the different sides/reasons of grading. It divided the reasons into two categories. One category is to motivate, punish and sort students. The other category is for documenting teacher and student progress, to provide feedback and to inform instructional decisions. Chapter nine was about timing in terms of grading and homework. As teachers we must make sure not to teach through homework because students can actually suffer from it. I think if a teacher tries to teach through homework, a student could not get all the information they need to know, where then when assessment time came, they wouldn't be able to refer to all the correct information. Chapter ten was about the retaking policy when it comes to tests and homework. I can relate to this chapter because of the many policies that I have seen. I am uncertain as to what my personal retake policy will be but I want to make sure that it is for the student benefit without them taking advantage of it. I have seen situations where students will not try as hard on something but they know they will have an opportunity to retake it when they have more time. I think it is important to leave retakes only to certain situations to try and avoid this.
Sara
In these chapters the main idea that I got was about grading, but really being sure and being aware of how you are grading. All the chapters talked about different times that teachers grade students and the different way teacher’s grade students. It is very important for a teacher to really think about how they are grading an assignment and not just put a grade on a student’s work without careful thought first. I feel that the idea of grading has changed drastically from how it is meant to be. Grading should be a reflection of sorts for the student and the teacher to determine how the student is progressing and how they are doing in the class their selves. However grading has become very informal and sort of a one shoe fits all for every student. We work hard as teachers to try to teach too many different learning styles, but then fall short when it comes to grading. There are too many aspects that need to be taken into account when grading a student’s work to grade each student the same.There are somethings in these chapters that I did not fully agree with, and that I think I will use in my classroom. I think grading homework and grading effort have their place in the math classroom given the right circumstances. I think that homework meant to allow students to practice new concepts outside of school is very important. Students need the extra practice to help them master the concept. While I agree that this is not always the case, I do think there are situations where homework is needed. In these situations I think that students should be graded on effort rather than if they got the problem right or wrong. Homework should be used as practice for the students, therefore they should not get penalized if they tried a problem and made a mistake. Students should be encouraged to try a difficult problem and not be afraid to make mistakes. While I understand that grading effort can be difficult and at times not appropriate. When it comes to my classroom and the extra practice homework I will have students do, effort will be something I take into consideration.
Cooper
All four of these chapters focused on grading and how different things can impact the process. I think growing up we view grading as this concrete incorruptible and sometimes unflinching standard, these readings have done a lot to illuminate the potential fluidity of grading. Chapter 8 of the reading talks about how grading typically serves two purposes either to motivate students or to assess progress. These two purposes are drastically different but both can serve a purpose in the classroom. In an ideal world we could grade students entirely on progression as the main goal for any instructor should be to further their student's understanding and not necessarily to make sure that students all reach the same arbitrary benchmark. However, we know that all students aren't motivated entirely by a curiosity in the content area or a yearning to understand the content and for students like this sometimes grades can be an effective motivator. If a gifted student is becoming bored with the material and is clearly not putting forth a full effort then perhaps their grade should reflect that, maybe it is an 'A' for another student but it merely their 'C' work. Conversely a student who is has taken their work from being an objective 'F' to an objective 'C' that progress could warrant consideration for a higher grade. This of course would lend itself to criticisms of unfairness and punishing students for understanding the material, but that is what makes "Fair isn't Always Equal" an appropriate title for the book. The idea is that as teachers we should want to push students to do their best work and to progress as much as they can as learners and that means that sometimes we are obliged to tell students we don't think they are working to their potential. I feel just about any way we view grading it can be problematic, but the constants in terms of purpose for grading should be that we are finding out where students are in relation to where we want them to be with our content and that we use that information to make sure that they are consistently challenged by and learning from the material.
Cheyenne
These chapters focused entirely on grading and grading policies. I agreed with a lot of what these chapters said, especially concerning the mastery of material and how that does not always seem like a priority in the way many teachers have been grading. I think it is important that projects and tests be weighted more heavily than homework, because these are the outlets that show that students understand the content. Often times, homework is simply busy work, designed to promote memorization that does nothing for content mastery. It is easy enough for students to fill in answers from the text, or answer questions that are simple in nature and do not require any higher level thought processes. If anything, homework should be seeing if students are understanding the content that was taught to them, and can be a useful tool in this manner, but it should not be graded.There was also mention of proficiency based grading, which is something that is starting to come into popularity, and I personally hope the trend continues. Proficiency based grading relies on student mastery in order for students to pass classes. It does not focus on memorizing facts and 100 point scaling, but instead grades on a simpler scale of the student’s level of understanding. These are often things used currently in charter schools and private schools, and rely heavily on project based learning. Through projects, students are easier able to dig into the material, uncover knowledge of the content, and then display what they know in a creative way. If something does not come across clearly, they may be given the chance to explain their projects, thus proving their understanding (or lackthereof) through verbal means. This helps eliminate testing, which does not prove anything about a student’s true and full understanding of the content.
There was also discussion about differentiation in terms of grading. This included things such as not grading things that are unrelated to content mastery. Behavior, attendance, and effort are not things that need to be incorporated into final grades, as they show nothing about what the students has or has not learned. Participation is a good way to gain an understanding of some students’ knowledge, especially those who may not be able to routinely complete their homework but still understand the material. But participation can also be daunting and something that can bring a final grade down on students who prefer not to talk in class and are better suited to showing their understanding through projects.